Everyone needs some cute panties.
The Japanese toy company Takara Tomy has announced the release of a set of “cute” underwear for its popular Licca-chan line of dress-up dolls.
his announcement came via Twitter on August 2nd, which also happens to be underwear day in Japan (it’s due to a pun based on the numbers eight and two and the Japanese word for underwear, pantsu). The new set of panties will come in a set of three, which will include a pink pair of panties with white dots, a pair featuring a pink flower and white lace and one pair with an adorable picture of a baby chick on the butt.
Not surprisingly many Licca-chan fans took to Twitter to react to these cute new undies, saying things like “Ihis is what I’ve been waiting for, cute underwear” and “Uh… when I was a kid Licca-chan only had white underwear…”
Licca-chan First edition (1967)
However, far more interesting than the reactions on Twitter was a question raised by J-Cast News. Was there actually a demand for this product? After all, you pretty much never even see Licca-chan’s underwear, right?
In order to answer this question J-Cast News talked to a Takara Tomy PR rep. The PR rep began by explaining that in reality there are plenty of situations where you see Licca-chan’s underwear. For example, children might want to wash her clothes in a Licca-chan washing machine or giver her a batch in the Japanese-style bathtubs present in her house playsets.
J-Cast News then asked the rep why they decided to sell the underwear separately. The rep explained that many customers lose Licca-chan’s underwear (they should check in the washing machine) and then call asking if they sell replacement ones. So they decided to sell these as a possible replacement pack for the standard white undies.
That all mostly makes sense, but what about the whole “cute” design? What was the need for that?
“Actual children’s underwear is cute so we decided if we’re going to sell Licca-chan underwear separately we might as well sell cute ones.”
Ok, but what about that interesting pair of underwear with the chick on the butt? J-Cast News asked about that too.
“We wondered if actual fifth graders (Licca-chan is supposed to be in fifth grade) would wear underwear with a baby chick on the butt, so we had actual owners of Licca-chan dolls take a survey to decide which pairs of underwear they thought were cute and the baby chick one was popular.”
In the end though, regardless of what the PR rep says, we all know that the reason for the existence of these tiny panties is publicity. After all, we wouldn’t be talking about Licca-chan’s panties had they just released a replacement pack of white underwear, right?
These adorable tiny panties go on sale on August 5th and will cost 500 JPY.
Source: Yahoo News Japan
Featured image: Takara Tomy
Image: Takara Tomy, Wikipedia Commons
